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reached over and patted my leg with his paw, his way of saying More toast, please. I loved the little fur balls, but somehow I couldn’t quite believe they knew who was going to live and who wasn’t. Granted, they had some unexplainable talents, but I just didn’t think that Death Psychic was one of them.
    Owen woke me in the morning, about a minute or so before the clock went off. I opened one eye and stared into his wide golden ones. “I’m awake,” I said. His response was to head-butt my forehead. There was no point in trying to sneak in an extra few minutes.
    I sat up and stretched. “I’m up,” I said to the cat, who still stared at me without blinking. “Happy?” It seemed he was, because he dropped back to the floor and padded to the door.
    Both cats were sitting by the refrigerator when I went downstairs. I fed them, leaning against the counter as they ate. Owen took a morsel of food from his dish and carefully moved it to the floor, the way he always did. Hercules was about to eat when he suddenly stopped and looked up at me, his eyes going from where I was slouched by the sink, to the table and back to me. He meowed softly, tipping his head to one side.
    “I’m meeting Maggie for breakfast.”
    He looked at the dish of food in front of him and covered his face with a paw.
    “Oh, come on,” I said. “You know I can’t take you to Eric’s. How would I explain taking a cat out for breakfast? People would think I was crazy.”
    Hercules continued to stare at me. Owen being Owen, he didn’t pay any attention at all; he continued taking food out of his bowl one bite at a time and then eating it.
    “You have a perfectly good breakfast in front of you.” I rubbed the back of my neck. I already was a crazy cat lady. Someday, someone was going to catch me having a conversation with the cats and my secret would be out. Of course, as far secrets about the cats went, the fact that I talked to them like they were people was pretty tame compared to some of the other things I was hiding about them.
    Deciding he’d won the stare-down, Herc dropped his head and started to eat.
    I zipped around the little house, tidying up, while the cats had breakfast. Then I pulled on my boots and jacket and grabbed the broom to sweep away the snow that had drifted onto the back stoop.
    Owen came up behind me and started down the side of the house. “I’m leaving in fifteen minutes,” I said. His ears twitched, which either meant he’d heard and would be back in time or he’d heard and was ignoring me.
    Hercules sat by the door and watched while I brushed the stairs clear. “You need boots,” I said. “I bet the Grainery sells kitty boots.” The Grainery was where Rebecca bought Owen’s favorite catnip treat, Fred the Funky Chicken.
    “They sell doggie sweaters.” Herc flicked his tail at me in the universal gesture that one didn’t have to understand cats to get. And then he turned and walked through the door. Literally through the door.
    It still made my breath catch. I didn’t have a clue how he did it. In fact, the first time I’d seen him walk nonchalantly through an inch-and-a-half-thick wooden door at the library, I thought I was having hallucinations or even a stroke. Because cats can’t walk through doors or walls, can they?
    Except Hercules could. Owen, on the other hand, couldn’t. What he could do was make himself invisible when it suited him. Which was usually when it didn’t suit me.
    Both cats had some kind of magical abilities. Superpowers, if you will. I had no idea why or how. I had no idea if there were any other cats in Mayville Heights that could do the same thing. It’s not exactly something you can bring up in conversation. I couldn’t invite Roma over for coffee and then say, “Oh, by the way, any of those cats at your clinic able to walk through walls? Any of them go invisible on a whim?”
    I couldn’t tell anyone. At best I would look like a mentally unbalanced person, and at